


Slip

by aderyn



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: 221B Ficlet, Hands, Hearts, Post Reichenbach, Reunion, The Adventure of the Empty House, knots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-18
Updated: 2013-04-18
Packaged: 2017-12-08 21:03:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/765986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aderyn/pseuds/aderyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once, when Sherlock was exhausted, John tied him to the bed.  Some kind of army knot-- done with a bedsheet, soft as fog.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Slip

**Author's Note:**

> Happy birthday to [Professorfangirl](http://archiveofourown.org/users/lizeckhart/pseuds/professorfangirl)! For you, writer-with, some Sherlock tied to the bed.

#   ** _  
_**

_"A man is a bundle of relations, a knot of roots, whose flower and fruitage is the world."--R.W. Emerson  
_

 

His hands are too gentle when he puts them on Sherlock. The roughing-up he deserves John tosses into _you_ , and _stupid_ , and _bastard_.

When Sherlock came back from his time away, John finally did put his arms out.  It had been blowing for twenty-four minutes and they’d been home from a murder for fourteen when John put his arms out and Sherlock took a shy step and the warmth bound to his bones in a kind of transfusion he’d never seen before—and it stretched and it held and it’s something you learn to lean into and not observe but Sherlock had never learned that trick, never known.

“God, you stupid bastard,” John said.

“If the deity exists he may very well be stupid,” said Sherlock, because there’s a twining hot through the vertebral spaces and rough through the palms and nothing to say, then, that the hands can’t.

*******

Once, when Sherlock was exhausted, John tied him to the bed.  Some kind of army knot-- done with a bedsheet, soft as fog, just a suggestion really-- of which he’s since made a study.  When he woke six hours later he was free.

Sometimes, gone, he thought in slips:

Once when he was ill, John--

Once when he was starving, John--

Held him like a hitch in a gale, didn’t he, you stupid bastard.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Knottage: 
> 
> The artillery loop or harness loop is a knot with a loop on the bight for "non-critical" purposes. Heh.  
> [Thief knot](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thief_knot)  
> [Grief knot](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grief_knot)  
> The grief knot ( is a portmanteau of ) and combines the features of a granny knot and a thief knot, producing a “highly insecure” hold.


End file.
